Hot Fire, Good Pizza

When you riff through your pizza memories, what do you see? Whole hot pies served on dented tin trays, the slices dripping yard-long strands of melting cheese? Running after school to the local pizzeria, hoping they still had the corner piece, Sicilian? Waiting for a Stouffer's French bread pizza to crisp in the toaster-oven? I see all these, plus slices grabbed on the fly from Famous Ray's on Sixth Avenue; waiting for an hour outside John's Pizzeria on Bleeker to get one of their iconic pepperoni pies, and sitting in Stromboli on Saint Mark's Place at three in the morning, when two slices with extra-cheese seemed like the greatest idea in the world.

As may be evident, I grew up in New York City, where pizza was for me a near-daily repast. Portable, cheap, a meal if you needed it but not so filling you couldn't eat dinner an hour later.

It is for the above reasons – and not merely because New Yorkers believe we know everything about everything until pummeled into believing otherwise – that we think we know how pizza is supposed to taste.

Which brings me to the state of pizza in Portland, a city wise enough to know great pizza from good, while open-minded enough to embrace unusual pizzas, in unusual settings. And if some are little wedge-shaped epiphanies, and other are lousy, hey, this way to greatness, right? Except of course that greatness is already here, at places like Apizza Scholls, where, just as at John's in New York, you'll likely wait for the privilege of that pie. But it's worth it, to say nothing of what you'll save in airfare.

Apizza Scholls
Apizza Scholls opened several years ago, and I did not go. I did not go when every person I know in Portland raved about it, or when Anthony Bourdain featured the Southeast Portland pizzeria on an episode of his series "No Reservations." Why? Because who in his right mind would wait three hours for pizza? And, how good can this pizza really be? "This is what pizza's supposed to look like," commented one diner in my party, as we stared upon a "Margo"rita (whole milk and fresh mozzarella, pecorino Romano and fresh basil). "And this is what pizza's supposed to taste like," added another, and proceeded to explain the proper aerodynamics of the chewy/crackly crust (the slice retains its lift with just a little sag-at-center from the heft of sauce and cheese); that it was perfectly baked (scorch spots from an oven that can reach 900 degrees? Check); that the cheese-to-sauce ratio was spot on.

Oh, and just to gild the lily: Apizza Scholls makes the best Caesar salad I've had in Portland. I love the food at Apizza Scholls, and so does everyone else: by 6 p.m., there were 40 people waiting for a table.

Give Pizza a Chance
When John Eads arrived in Portland last Christmas, the 29-year old could not find a job, which, while initially tough for the Evansville, Ind., native, turns out to be our great good fortune, because he created Give Pizza a Chance, a food cart that opened in late April and currently turns out what I think is one of the three best pizzas in the city. What was Eads' inspiration? "Well, I've been making pizza at home for about 10 or 12 years, working on the crust and the sauce," a tangy, saucy sauce he makes every day from scratch out of "mostly organic" ingredients. In fact, Eads makes everything from scratch every day, either in the 64-square-foot cart or at home in Southeast Portland, where he mixes and proofs a half-whole wheat/half-white dough that results in a crust with an incomparable nuttiness and chew.

After the pizzas are laden with provolone, mozzarella and yellow cheddar, they're baked in two electric ovens inside the cart, ovens that heat up to 700 degrees. The resulting pizza is dreamy, fresh and flavorful. Just as marvelous are the sodas Eads brews – fresh ginger, lemon-lime, cherry-vanilla and mint – with beet sugar and about half as sweet and carbonated as commercial soda and served, as are all of Give Pizza a Chance's offerings, with biodegradable paper goods.

Portland's appetite for pizza seems boundless, as more places open, more dough is tossed, more pies are sliced.Hour-long waits are not uncommon at many of the hottest spots. The guys at Good Neighbor Pizzeria slice theirs emphatically, with a machete-size mezzaluna.

Good Neighbor Pizzeria
Hmm, what's this hip little place on the corner? The place with the roll-up doors and the picnic tables inside and out front? The cool full bar and the cool server who, when asked, tells the history of the high-ceilinged, raw-beamed space – once an appliance store, then a meat market, then a suspected drug den. Since Halloween 2007 it's been Good Neighbor, a casual spot where the crust has the perfect chew, comes swirled with tomato sauce with a nice hit of oregano and tomato paste, loaded with homemade, local organic ingredients, and is especially nice accompanied by a pitcher of Hopworks Urban Brewery beer. Focaccia sandwiches, calzone, salads? Good Neighbor's got 'em, as well as a young local clientele working their way through Sweet Piglet (Canadian bacon and organic pears) and Clean Green (cheese-less, with artichoke hearts, spinach and green olives) pies with looks of deep contentment, as if to say, aren't we lucky we have Good Neighbor?

Ken's Artisan Pizza
I can't think of one person I wouldn't send to Ken's for a fabulous meal and a fabulous time, and clearly, I'm not alone. The place is perennially packed, always bustling, and yet service is smooth and swift and super-friendly. We often grab a seat at the bar, across from the slender L of an open kitchen where a retinue of pizzaioli slides pizza into the wood-burning oven. What emerge are 12-inch thin-crust pies, with big bubbles of black blister on the edges, in my opinion, the best part of any pizza. Unless, of course, it's one of Ken's Soppressata, the thin slices of spicy sausage having gone crisp and crinkly and bullfight-red atop tomato sauce, full-milk mozzarella and fresh basil. Toss on a few flecks of supple Calabrian chiles and, well, let's just say last time I came this close to ordering a second pie just for myself. Though I was glad I didn't, because Ken's offered something completely unexpected for a pizza place: one of the best desserts in the city, a Valrhona brownie with a toothsomeness somewhere between chocolate fudge and a Tootsie roll, topped with pistachio gelato, chocolate caramel sauce and chopped pistachios.

Nostrana
What a beautiful restaurant chef Cathy Whims presides over, with soaring ceilings and a glittering bar and cords of wood stacked at the ready to be tossed into the wood-fired oven. What emerge are pizzas imbued with a little wood-smoke, which teases out the flavors of, say, the Bosco, a dinner-plate-sized circle of nearly cracker-thin crust topped with asparagus, fennel, shiitake mushrooms, lemon, shaved Parmesan and a poached egg. Best of all, perhaps, was the Salumi, with smoky paprika salami, sweet and spicy peppers so juicy they squirted, and lots of provolone and mozzarella. Though Nostrana is as smashing-looking as any restaurant in this city, the cathedral-sized space is also extremely comfortable, in no small part due to the genial and attentive service. And did I eat what thus far is the year's best antipasto? I did, a charcuterie plate that included a properly unctuous chicken liver pÃ¢te as well as a hot-sweet onion relish so divine, I fantasized about eating it not only on Nostrana's warm bruschetta but my breakfast cereal.

Tastebud
I did not know what to expect when I visited Tastebud, the physical space of heretofore mobile-brick-oven-hauler/caterer/farmers markets' rock star pizzaiolo Mark Doxtader. First, I had to find the place, open as of June on Thursday nights only, in a space where the outdoor plaque reads "Sanborns." But there, on the door, a Tastebud menu, and inside, butter-yellow walls, communal tables set with good if mismatched china, and a sideboard with a profusion of fresh-cut flowers, so that you feel you are not so much in a commercial restaurant but at a dinner party at a splendid home. The servers cannot be more darling, the menu proof that less is more: three salads, five pizzas, three desserts, wine and beer and Jones sodas. The pizza with pancetta, mascarpone and fresh arugula looks like a still life by Cezanne, the crust bubbled and glistening with oil, the pancetta in plump little hunks. I think Tastebud's pizza is my favorite, not merely for its taste but for the whole gestalt – the warmth, the conviviality, the way, when we saw friends across the room, they simply moved their wine and rhubarb galette to our table and no one batted an eye.

Al Forno Ferruzza Pizza
"Margherita, do hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo," sang Stephen Ferruzza, the enthusiastic young pizza savant of this food cart near the PSU campus. He slapped the pizza dough he'd made that morning into a rough circle, dashed it with a little sauce, laid on the whole-milk mozzarella and slid it in the 800-degree, propane-fueled oven. When my individual pizza was not to his liking, he tossed it and made me another. Did this take a little more time than I would have liked? Yeah, but the pizza, about 8-inches across and piled with fresh basil, was as delightful as its maker. Ferruzza also makes calzone and panini and a variety of desserts that feature his own (!) maple syrup.

Signal Station
Want to take a trip back in time, via a piece a pizza? Head to St. Johns, to this refurbished 1939 gas station with the Deco neon spire and the gas pumps that read the oh-if-only price of 19 cents a gallon. The tiny shop makes a thin-crust pizza with your choice of dozens of toppings, from the traditional triple-cheese and tomato sauce, to a Sauvie Island, with pesto, smoked salmon, capers and walnuts.

Hot Lips
Reliably excellent pizza with those nice cheese blisters (try the seasonal Carlton Farms smoked bacon) and yummy house-brewed sodas (try the blueberry) served by squadrons of cute counter boys and girls in a zillion locations (well, four, with rumor of a fifth in The Civic, the condo on West Burnside). Family-owned, local-ingredient-sustained – what's not to like?

Escape From New York
Sit beneath a photo of New York's iconic John's Pizzeria and enjoy a slice nearly as good: thin crust but not micro, with a little bend in that slice from the perfect sauce-to-cheese ratio. The atmosphere is a dead ringer for any of a thousand New York pizza parlors, with an acerbic counter guy cracking jokes, a radio playing somewhere and the faintest dusting of flour hanging in the air.

Pizza Fino
Sparkling clean and pretty, with a sexy little bar and a back dining room that feels more upscale Vietnamese pho house than Kenton pizzeria. The thin-crust pizza is made under the tutelage of Brooklyn native Linda Zumoff, who co-owns the northeast Alberta Street pizzeria Bella Faccia. Pasta, panini and fat calzone oozing mozzarella, too.